To Charm a Ghost
by Chaltab
Summary: When a sorceress discovers an amulet that can control ghosts, she doesn't hesitate it to use it for her own gain, even if her original intent was somewhat noble. Now, Danny must stop the crazed woman from destroying Amity Park with her newfound power.
1. Big Mistake in a Tall Tower

**Disclaimer One: I don't own Luna, Teen Titans, or Danny Phantom.**

**Disclaimer Two: If you don't want any spoilers, skip the author's note until you've finished the chapter.**

**Author's Note**: _This is indeed a Danny Phantom story, but to set up the villain, we must first understand her motivations. This story will refer to three others, none of which are required to understand, as all important plot elements will be explained in the text. These stories are **"Wings of the Eagles"** and "**Danny's Inferno**" by _Legend Maker_, and my other fanfiction "**Time Phantom**"… _

_ This story is a _**prequel **_to Time Phantom. "**Wings of the Eagles**" specifically the Restless arc details Jinx previous ordeal with ghosts. And Danny's Inferno and the catastrophe of that story is the whole reason Jinx knows of Amity Park. This story, as I said, is a prequel to Time Phantom, and sets up a key item that I have not yet fully explained or used in that story. Anyway. Enough introduction. Here we go…._

* * *

They were the Troika. That is how it had been for years now. It meant nothing especially sinister, and neither did it supplant what they knew to be their roots. It was simply what they called themselves. They were Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo. 

Jinx, a pink-haired sorceress who specialized in bad-luck charms, was a middling height nineteen-year-old looking for ways to use her unique talents. Not to help anyone but herself of course.

Mammoth had the strength of 8,675,309 men, and was fairly intelligent to boot. Not that he was a genius, like the third member of the trio.

Gizmo, a diminutive braniac with a high-tech backpack and a rather immature and nasty disposition, was busy looting a rather large vault, insulting the precious stones using the words "Snot" and "Crud" alternatively as his mechanical limbs tossed the gems backwards towards his two partners in crime. Well. To one of them. Mammoth held a gargantuan bag full of diamonds they had stolen over the course of the current week. (It was now Thursday.)

Suddenly, Mammoth's mutant senses picked up something… "Hey, guys. I think I heard something." He sniffed the air. "There's someone coming."

"I'll handle it," said Jinx who had been standing around looking very bored, watching for the Troika's most likely would-be captors: The Teen Titans.

But alas, this is not a tale of Titans, but of Phantoms. And as such, it must have something to do with Amity Park and ghosts, correct? And robbing a diamond vault in Jump City, Florida would be an unlikely beginning for such a story, or one might think…

If the fourth wall had been down, these might have been the thoughts in Jinx's mind as she rounded the corner and exited the building. But as it stood, there was only one thing on her mind: defense. If the Titans were to show up—any of them—Jinx would have to warn the other two. She was so totally focused on her task, however, that she didn't even notice the woman in the nice suit hiding next to the entrance. She just hovered on by, leaving said woman quite perplexed.

Raising her hands at a noise she thought she heard, Jinx summoned a pink concentration of energy into her hands. But looking around she saw nothing. Then she turned and saw a small navy-blue cat standing near her in the glow of a light fixture hanging over head. In this, the local branch of Chaltabium Bromide Industries, the massive sky-scraping structure just south of down-town Jump City, such light fixtures where quite common. Blue cats weren't.

Nevertheless, Jinx didn't seem to be surprised. "Oh. Hey Luna," she sighed dismissively at the anime-eyed kitty. "Did you need something."

"Jinx. My crescent doesn't lie! You are one of the new Senshi that I must recruit to fight the evil Youma and protect the princess. I have all the information you need contained in this Transformation necklace. Just utter the words "Hoth Power… Ma—"

**_BLAURRGHH! _** The tiny cat screamed in pain as the light fixture that illuminated it fell, crushing it. A new bad luck charm Jinx had learned. Totally invisible, unlike the pink waves she normally threw.

Jinx sighed. "There she goes again--trying to recruit me to fight the Netherverse."

_**AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHLL! **_

It was another scream, but this time not from Luna, but from a fair distance. And it came from the direction of the room with the vault…

"What's going on in here?" Jinx demanded as she slid into the room and stopped in mid air.

"Um… we… uh.." Mammoth couldn't seem to find the right words.

But he need not say a thing. The trail of blood leaking from underneath a shattered showcase that bore the marks of recent rough handling by Mammoth. And a dark-skinned woman in a turquoise business suit—or her arm anyway—was protruding from the site of impact. Whoever had been underneath that thing was clearly dead.

"Mammoth! You crud-munching idiot!" Gizmo yelled at the team's muscle. "Now we're wanted for murder!"

"Hey! You're the one who said to smash the intruder with the showcase!"

"BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS THAT KLUDGE-EATING TAMARANIAN!" Gizmo fumed. "When you saw that it wasn't a Titan you should have stopped, moron!"

Mammoth ignored the screams and pulled the broken showcase off the corpse he recently brought into existence. And wished he hadn't. She was quite literally a bloody mess, and Gizmo turned and threw up.

All this time Jinx had been staring at the two in horror. "You..!" she stammered.

"Jinx?" Mammoth seemed to be petitioning advice more than expressing concern.

"You guys did this! You're not pinning any of this on me! I wasn't even in this room! Do you understand me?"

With that outbirst, Jinx took off, flying upward and blasting out the sky light, she immediately headed north. She had to get away from the town….

Suddenly, Gizmo, suspended by his jetpack, was flying along side here. "Where the snot do you think you're going?"

"I'm going to find a way to undo what you idiots did. Keep the corpse from rotting. I'm going to go retrieve its ghost somehow and put that woman back together."

"You've completely flipped your kludge-munching mind!" Gizmo screamed. "Since when do you believe in ghosts?"

Jinx glowered at him. "I was POSSESSED by one, REMEMBER?" She was referring to an incident with a former criminal who had called herself Murdercrow. Murdercrow had been betrayed and killed by a man she loved—in the Titans Tower, no less. And said tower had acted as a battery for her ghost's dark power…

And it just so happened that Jinx was being held prisoner when it happened. Raven had eventually exorcized the "demon", but not without cost to Jinx's short term sanity. And now, Jinx was going to hunt ghosts. But this time, they wouldn't control her; SHE would control THEM.

"Oh yeah. Still, Jinx, you need to stop. What happened to the Troika facing everything together?"

Jinx answered by zapping his jetpack with a bad luck beam, and blasting off. In a few moments, Gizmo's jetpack sputtered and failed, and he found himself falling towards the ground… Until he was caught by a huge pair of talons—green talons.

Back at the CBI building, Mammoth finally had managed to drag the bag of diamonds to the roof, along with the frozen body of the woman he'd killed. (Gizmo had done this before taking off after Jinx) Why she had been in the building so late after-hours was anybodies guess. Just then, a sudden noise and several familiar scents caught his attention—the Titans.

"So Mammoth, going somewhere with those rocks?" Robin askd.

Then Starfire saw the body. "Oh, X'hal, no!" she cursed.

Cyborg pointed his Sonic Canon at Mammoth. "You sick…"

The other Titans saw it too. "Team, as if you haven't yet noticed, they've killed someone. Proceed with caution. Titans GO!"

**Meanwhile in Amity Park**

Danny sighed. Not in exasperation, but out of happiness. It had been quite a while since there had been any significant ghost activity in Amity Park. Well… There had been that recent incident with Technus and the video game Doomed, but otherwise there had been nothing unusual. So it was with great pleasure that Danny enjoyed a weekend of doing nothing but goofing off. (True, it was Thursday, but he had Friday off, which made it technically the weekend already)

So. A long weekend. No evil ghosts to fight. Good weekend, right? Right. Seriously. Danny was enjoying not having to risk his life for a change. He'd had enough of that lately.

A the phone rang. And since Jazz was at her psychology seminar, and his parents were trying to rebuild the helicopter they'd stolen from Vlad into a ghost-fighting machine, they were oblivious to the outside world. So, Danny answered the phone.

"Talk. Danny here."

"Brain, It's me."

"Oh, hey Noel." Danny spoke to his new "buddy". "Don't you have lives to save or something."

"Yeah, about that…"

Danny cut him off. "Hey, Noel. I had Tucker do some research and I heard that you were once admitted to a mental hospital. Is there any truth to that?"

"THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! And don't call me Noel. Use the code name."

"Sorry, _Pinky_. I was just wondering something. Wouldn't it be weird if you like… never got out. And the whole world was your demented dream? Food for thought."

Danny thought he heard growling at the other end of the line. "The rumors that the world is my dream are still unverified, darn it!"

"So, Pinky, what did you want?"

"I received a report that the sorceress criminal Jinx might be on her way up north. I thought I'd warn you. Her companions said something of her being obsessed with finding the ghost of one of their victims. She may be headed to Amity. Thought I'd warn you."

"Ho-boy. So much for a relaxing long weekend. Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem."

"Bye, Noel!"

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" he bellowed into the phone. But Danny didn't hear it: he'd already hung up.

**END CHAPTER ONE**

* * *

'_Nother Author's Note: Any of you who have been long-time fans of Legend Maker will absolutely love me for that phone call! If you aren't, then go read ALL of her stuff and then you will too. The character here only identified as Noel was indeed created by Ash the Wanderer and used primarily by Legend Maker._


	2. Navan and the Rise of Shadow Johnny

**Author's Note**: _This story is going to be a quickie compared to Time Phantom and Legacy. I'm thinking something like five chapters. Perhaps more, perhaps less. It's not intended as the epic I wanted Time Phantom to be._

_

* * *

_Hector Souphannavan knew amulets quite well. And in his sagely wisdom, he was unmatched. Sure, it was true perhaps that Jason Blood, the bearer of the demon Etrigan, was ultimately a better sorcerer. And perhaps there were masters of dark arts even greater than he. But Hector was undoubtedly the world master of amulet-based magics. So it was no surprise when the young sorceress Jinx came to him—as Jason Blood typically worked for the side that upheld the law, as much as Etrigan hated it.

"Navan," Jinx addressed him by his commonly used name. His super villain alias, he supposed, though he didn't really consider himself a villain. Just a simple merchant. "I would like to do business with you."

"Very well, dear. Tell me what you're interested in: A power-amplifying broach? An evil-repelling artifact? What'll it be?" Despite being from Europe, his accent had long blended in with the local dialect in the quaint Ohio town he operated from.

"No, actually. I am looking for something… Something that will give me the ability to find ghosts, and to control them." Jinx removed a small bag of diamonds she'd taken from the Troika stash. "I trust this will be sufficient payment?"

Hector took the small brown burlap sack and untied the leather cord sealing it shut. He shifted through the diamonds, not counting them, but making sure they were real. "I believe it will," he said. "I'll be right back."

Proceeding to a back room, Hector shut the door. He then dumped the diamonds on a table and removed a turquoise cufflink from his pocket. "_Hanma Sousala Ta Rana!_" he chanted. The amulet glowed and a beam of light burst forth from it, consuming the diamonds. When it cleared, they were all there. They were indeed real.

Hector decended to an underground chamber beneath the back room and turned on the lights. He looked at his walls, upon which were shelves and shelves of magical artifacts, many magical artifacts indeed. And he was personally certified by the Academy's best to wield all of them. Using a small light-giving gem to guide him, he searched a dark corner till he found what he was looking for. It was indeed a ghost-controlling amulet. And it was the only one he couldn't use. He was certified to, but it required a certain touch. One must have had previous contact—very intimate contact—with ghosts to be able to use it.

In short, one must be a ghost himself or herself, or if not, must have been possessed by a ghost at one time or another. And if rumors Hector had heard were to be believed, that very thing had happened to Jinx a couple years back. So Hector was glad to get rid of the liability. After all, he couldn't use it anyway. Was it really that bad that he made a little money off of it?

**oooo**

Jinx tapped her foot impatiently. What could be taking the old man so long? She wandered around the shop in curiosity. The upfront trinkets were just that—souvenirs with no enhanced properties. Most "magical" amulets were infused with strange powers by strange beings that many an ancient man worshiped as gods. But when those beings died or disappeared, for whatever reasons, man decided to try their own hands at such artifacts, usually with rather lackluster results.

A noise startled Jinx, and she looked up to see the man known as Navan exiting the back room with a small box. He placed the box on the counter and motioned for her to come over.

"This should be exactly what you need, child."

Jinx resented being addressed that way, but did not complain. "Thank you."

"One more thing." Navan cautioned as Jinx pulled the box closer.

"Yes?" Jinx said as she opened it. The amulet was shaped as a scarab or spider—Jinx didn't know which. It had what seemed to be a ruby, divided into four sections, imbedded in it, protruding from the front and back and split by the golden metal skeleton of the amulet. It was beautifully crafted.

"This can only be used by certain people—people who've had a little experience with the afterlife."

"If that's all, then you have nothing to worry about. Shall I go?"

"If you don't need lessons, then go at any time." Navan replied.

Jinx laughed. As if she would accept a lesson from such a low-class magician. Besides she didn't have any diamonds left. "No thanks. I'll manage."

**Amity Park**

"Just be on the lookout, OK?" Danny pleaded with his friend Tucker Foley over the phone.

"Yeah sure, whatever you say," Tucker replied. Camco-Soft had just released the new Mangler Brother's game for PC and Tucker was too busy mangling to pay attention.

"Tuck, this is serious! There may be a ghost-obsessed sorceress headed this way and I'll need all the eyes I can get!'

"Can't you get Sam to help you with this!"

"I already HAVE asked Sam, Tucker. She already agreed. Who do you want me to go ask, Jazz? Yeah right. She doesn't even know I'm half ghost—she barely BELIEVES in ghosts." Danny didn't want to sound whiny, but he knew he did. And for good reason too, as Tucker was near impossible to carry on a conversation with when some new technology, and the new Mangler Bros had individual bump mapping on each rendered pixel on each cel-shaded voxel of all the normal mapping and lighting effect present on each and every polygon. And it ran at as smooth 120 frames per second to boot.

So, yeah, Tucker was definitely in love with it. "Fine, but if my save game gets corrupted I'm blaming you," Tucker agreed.

With reluctance, Tucker tapped the quicksave key and powered down his computer. In a way, Danny's ghost powers were cooler than any video game. But videogames, unlike Danny's powers, didn't bring back bad memories of being nearly burned to death, attacked by multiple ghosts, and almost becoming a monster because of a casually stated wish that happened to be overheard by a dead harem girl/genie.

"Is there anything I can do?" Tucker asked a few minutes after arriving at the Fenton house.

"You do realize I didn't ask you to actually come over, just to stay alert." Danny told him while polishing the Specter Speeder.

"Oh yeah, right. And I closed down during a download too. Darn it!"

"Tucker, FOCUS!"

"Right." Tucker said, though it was clear his mind began to wander immediately.

"Tucker."

"I'm focusing."

"No, you're not."

Just then, Jack Fenton in his big orange hazmat suit (as usual) walked into the room.

"Danny! I've got some great news! I've figured out who the white-haired ghost boy is!"

"That's a lie; it's not me!" Danny lied.

"Of course it's not you, son, it's Red Hairiiiiiiiiiiinnng…"

The last part was drawn out in a yell, as the oblivious Jack stepped into the bucket of water Danny had previously been using to clean the speeder, and stumbled, slipped, and smashed his way into the hovering speeder. Danny jumped off, but he could do nothing to actually stop the barreling vehicle. And stopping it might have saved Danny a lot of trouble, as it slammed into the control panel for the ghost portal, shorting it out and causing it to open.

Before anyone could say anything, Danny noticed two things: The good news was that his father was unconscious. This was good news only because of the bad news, which was that Johnny 13 and Kitty had burst forth from the portal at almost the instant it had opened.

"See, Kitty," Johnny said, "I told you camping out in front of the portal was a good idea. I knew it would open eventually."

"Um…" Danny just stammered.

And to make matters worse a blue haired gothic punk rocker also stumbled from the portal, seemingly in a hurry to get away from something. "I swear that Klemper is going to drive me insane! And I thought that stupid cowboy Rose was bad…"

Then the rocker named McLean seemed to realize where she was. "Oh," was all she could say.

"Um… Hi?" Danny tried.

The three ghosts glared at him.

"Um… How bout I'm GOING GHOST, then," Danny yelled as the duo of white rings slid around him and transmogrified him from Daniel Fenton, C student, to Danny Phantom, super hero. (This was the reason his dad's concussion was so convenient.)

"Tucker, get out of here. I'll handle these three."

Tucker complied.

"Handle us?" Johnny mocked. "We haven't even done anything wrong yet!"

"'Yet' being the key word." Danny shot back while charging forward.

"Now that you mention it, you do owe me a repair job on my bike." Johnny said as he summoned a green glow. "Shadow, merge."

The dark bad luck specter lashed out, catching Danny across the jaw (apparently, merge meant 'hit the Ghost Boy so he couldn't prevent the merge, and THEN merge', clever, don't you think?) and then melded into Johnny's green aura, which apparently wasn't bright enough to hurt him. The figured produced by this fusion was like Johnny, but with jet-black hair, ashen orbs for eyes—and his clothes were dark as pitch and seemed alive, shimmering with faint traces of movement.

"Now, about that payback," he said as he charged at Danny…

END CHAPTER 2


	3. Tragic Irony and a Trip to Nowhere

_**Author's Note**: I am trying to make this story as stand-alone as possible, but the curse of established fanon strikes as always. I tried to make footnotes, though, with little + symbols (since easy edit deletes asteriks)..._

But now it deletes plus-signs as well. Curses. Either way, I have footnotes.  


* * *

"Kitty," Said Ember. "Your boyfriend is really weird." 

"At least Johnny did cause me to commit suicide," retorted Kitty acidly.

That was the WRONG thing to say. Ember grabbed her guitar and smashed Kitty in the face with it. Kitty retaliated by firing a tornado of ectoplasmic power at Ember, who, once recovered, switched her guitar to play a flaming tune, and burned Kitty. Kitty defended. With an ecto-shield, but her jacket caught on ecto-fire and she tore it off and threw it into the still-open portal.

Meanwhile, Jack came to. "SUFFERING SPOOKS!" He gasped, "A ghost catfight! In my lab, no less!"

So focused on destroying each other, the two phantoms engaged in the battle didn't even notice he was awake. Kitty jumped on Ember and started pounding her in the face, but was thrown off when Ember's flaming hair whipped into her face and wrapped around her neck, choking and cutting her off from her supply of afterlife-giving nitrogen. Then she proceeded to pound Kitty in the stomach with her gothic punches.

Suddenly, the two became aware of a new presence in the room. The stopped their relentless assault on each other and looked at the new comer. She war a black battle-dress, if any dress could be described as suitable for battle. Her skin was pale like a ghost, but her lack of an aura and the heat she generated made it clear she was very much alive. Oddly, her hair was pink.

"I don't suppose either of you are the woman killed by my idiot companion Mammoth."

The ghosts shook their heads. Then a wicked smile twisted onto Jinx's face.

"Either way," the pink haired sorceress said, "I've never used this before," referring to the amulet Navan had sold her. "So I guess a little practice wouldn't hurt."

Kitty and Ember found themselves slowly losing their grip on reality, gradually losing control of their bodies. "What are you doing to us?" Kitty asked?

"You'll be fine when I'm done. Care to tell me who the local superhero around here is?"

The two were in perfect agreement on this; Kitty wanted revenge for Danny humiliating Johnny. Ember was furious that the ghost child for causing her to lose her fanbase.

"**DANNY PHANTOM**." They said simultaneously. Jinx smiled. It was time for some fun.

**oooo**

Danny saw the green and black creature blur towards him and darted upward, going intangible and phasing through the ceiling. He grabbed the thermos from his room on the way up and darted sky ward. The time was around four in the afternoon, the season autumn. So the sun was low and about to wane, and the buildings had plenty of shadows where Danny could hide—if he wasn't currently glowing.

That didn't really matter, though, because Shadow Johnny was right on his ectoplasmic tail, so close that Shadow's aura was lashing out and trying to take a bite of it. Danny turned and fired several ectoplasmic beams at Johnny and then flipped in mid air, stopping and attempting to punch him in the gut as he flew on skyward. This might have been quite effective, too, if Johnny had not stopped and blocked Danny's punch.

"How's this for closer to the vest, kid?" Johnny said, and punched Danny in the chest, knocking him at least a mile laterally. Danny was finally stopped by friction when he skidded across the roof of an Amity Park skyscraper.

Danny got up from his collapsed position, his chest aching. If his ghost form had ribs, he was sure that punch had broken some of them. A flash of bright Darkness caught his eye, and suddenly a faint speck in the sky began to grow rather depressingly larger until Johnny was there.

"Nice, punch." Danny said. He really wanted to star a dialogue, because he wasn't to keen on taking another blow like that one.

"Thanks. But don't think I'm done with you." The Shadow Aura flared around Johnny's altered ectoplasmic body.

"Great." Danny let his green ghost aura flare to life as well. He'd learned a lot about his powers since he'd last fought with Johnny, but he still didn't know exactly how powerful Johnny was in this new form. Judging by that punch, he figured he'd need help winning this one.

The two clashed again, this time with Danny ready. The two exchanged attacks briefly, then parted. As Danny passed, he twirled around, raising his right leg and planting a kick into Johnny's shoulder and neck. The symbiote-enhanced ghost reeled from the blow, but recovered quickly and fired dark green ectoplasmic energy blasts at Danny.

"Whoa!" yelled Danny as he dodged them. Then he returned fire. Most of them missed Johnny and hit the roof of the building, but three of the 13 that he shot at Johnny hit their target… To absolutely no apparent effect.

"Want to try again?" Johnny's voice, deepened ever so slightly by his union with Shadow, taunted.

"Yeah, I do," Danny shot back. Lifting his hands, Danny directed his energy to form an ecto-ball as bright as he could muster above his head, and hurled it at Johnny. He stood in the shadow of the structure that housed the elevator on the roof of the sky scraper, while Danny hovered over the edge of the building…

The energy ball was less than three feet from Johnny when suddenly he faded into the darkness around him, and re-emerged from a connecting Shadow on the other side, his dark aura burning around him. Danny tried to defend against the blow, but was knocked down and off the building by the sheer force of Johnny's strike. He summoned more of his ghost power as he fell, keeping him alter. He was upside down, and so was Johnny as he perused the ghost boy.

The two met in the air and started trading blows again, spinning around. Danny could see the ground, and see that the explosions he had caused on the roof and created quite the panic inside the building. So, of course, as human beings are incapable of a controlled, calm, orderly evacuation, there was a stampeded of people on the ground. Danny did NOT want him and Johnny to crash into said people once they reached the ground…

Danny's power grew as his determination did, and he began to have the upper hand. Johnny turned upright and began spinning to kick. Danny dodged by circling, and together this sent the two into a spiral. As they plummeted ever closer to the ground, Danny got more intense.

"STOP!" He yelled, and caused a mini explosion around him, knocking Johnny back and halting his downward motion. The same action knocked Danny into the building, shattering the glass walls and tearing through some cubicles and computers. Brave workers who were still working, or just those who were trying to get a glimpse of the fight gawked as Danny landed, bounced once, and stopped in the middle of the floor, gradually getting up…

Just in time to dodge a series of black energy darts that Shadow Johnny had hurled into the building, destroying several computers and scaring the crap out of the now-fleeing white-collars.

"Johnny. Stop it now, you're going to end up hurting someone other than me!"

"Like I care," replied Johnny.

Danny was enraged. "I CARE!" Danny bellowed, throwing the ectoplasmic equivalent of a Kamehameha at Johnny. The entire building shook as the enourmous green-white beam tore through the offices, and glass exploded everywhere. In tragic irony, Danny was doing far more to potentially hurt the bystanders than Johnny, who was now unconscious in a crater somewhere north of Nowhere, Kansas, Shadow stripped from him by the intense light of the attack.

Thinking quickly, Danny went intangible and hurled himself at the ground, stopping above the fleeing employees and hastily creating a ectoplasmic energy shield above them, stopping he shards of falling glass and metal from landing on them. Danny was quick, too, and many lives were saved. But not quite quick enough, as several of the fleeing workers suffered cuts from glass that had been blasted down quickly by the explosion, and one man had a shard of steel imbedded in his lower spine, making him a paraplegic.

Danny's only consolation was that nobody was killed. And that, if he had been nearly any other superhero; if he had possessed nearly any set of abilities other than the one's he did, he probably wouldn't have been able to save anyone… Especially if he had "Pinky's" power…

Danny turned around and surveyed the damage. "Geez, after this damage, I'll be so cooked if someone discovers my identity."

He realized he was quite tired too, so he reverted to normal to save energy. There wouldn't be anyone here until after the cops were long gone, and they hadn't even gotten there yet.

That blast and subsequent ecto-shield had taken it out of him. So he was ready to go medieval on someone when he heard ominous footfalls behind him that coincided with his ghost sense triggering.

He turned around to see Kitty and Ember, their eyes glowing red, standing behind him not three yards away. Then another woman showed up, this one very much alive but with equally red eyes and a red glowing object in her hand, landed from a hovering position.

"You're that sorceress Jinx. Savior+ warned me you might show up." Danny was somewhat fatigued, but Kitty and Ember weren't really trouble. Ember didn't have her guitar, so no music spells. "If you were going to attack me by controlling ghosts, you might have picked a stronger pair," Danny smirked. "I'm **going ghost**!" And so he did.

"Stronger ghosts would have made this too easy for me," Jinx replied. Danny didn't think she was bluffing, so either she overestimated the strength of Kitty and Ember… Or she new something Danny didn't.

Suddenly, Jinx glowed red, and thrust her right arm up in an "uppercut" motion, and when she did, red aura's exploded into being around Kitty and Ember, and they leapt into the air and began raining red ectoplasmic blasts on Danny.

_Note to Self, _Danny thought, _that amulet enhances a ghost's powers…_

**Meanwhile in Kansas:**

A small pink dog darted into a small house in the middle of Nowhere, and panicking, he began to spew random gibberish that conveyed his raw fear but little else.

"Courage, what's wrong?" asked a kindly old woman with a thick Scottish accent.

The dog began screaming in random gibberish again, but this time he made motions with his forepaws that indicated something had smashed into the ground nearby.

"A meteor?" She asked. The dog nodded wildly in confirmation.

Then the dog threw himself on the ground and began twitching.

"There was someone IN the meteor?" the woman asked.

The dog again confirmed her extrapolation. Then she grabbed her hand and started pulling, and he led her out to the impact site. But by the time they got to the 20-foot-deep crater, Johnny was already gone.

* * *

For more about my fanon history of Ember, see chapters 7,8, and 9 of my fic _Time Phantom._

For more about Danny's previous experience with "'Pinky' Noel 'Savior' Collins" read Danny's Inferno by Legend Maker.


	4. One Pound for a Bag of Pummel

**A/N:** _Well there is some action, but this is mostly a comedy chapter. I needed to update but I still haven't really finalized how I should end it, so I couldn't really find a direction that suited me. Ah, I'll figure it out later. _

_

* * *

_Johnny swore. That punk had blasted Shadow off of him! How could he do that? Oh, he would ring that kid's scrawny ectoplasmic neck. Argh!

Suddenly Johnny realized two things. One, without Shadow he was pretty worthless in a fight, and two, that Shadow's perpetual state of pure rage had severely screwed-up his mind. Sure, he was a trouble maker, but he was no murderer. And he then remembered how he had gotten shadow, and how he'd been warned about such things—about Shadow's rage and how he manifested it as pure bad luck. But it was too late to turn back now. The two were linked throughout eternity. Still, perhaps it was best that they weren't together at the moment.

Johnny noticed his ring—the one he used to communicate with Kitty—was glowing red. And he felt something… odd… emanating from it. "Kitty's in trouble," he told himself. "And if Danny's hurt her that punk is history!" Johnny's ghost aura flared up as he sped on. He had to get back to Amity Park.

**oooo Back in Amity Park oooo**

"This is bad!" Danny yelled as he darted away from the two enraged female phantoms. Whatever that red glowy thing was in Jinx's hand, it was amplifying the powers of the duo of ghosts. And if Danny read the scenario right, it was controlling them too.

Danny pulled out the Melody cell-phone his Aunt Faith had gotten him for his last birthday and dialed Tucker's. "Tucker, are you there?

"Yeah, Danny. I headed over to Sam's house when the ghosts showed up, then we saw you and that black thing fighting over the Collin's Corp building and…"

"Guys, my dad's lab should be empty, get there, close the portal, and grab whatever ghost hunting gear you can find. I'm going to need help with this one."

"Why…" Tucker gasped as if for breath "what's wrong now."

"That sorceress showed up like I said, and she's somehow controlling Kitty and Ember to attack me! WHOA!" that last exclamation came as Danny dodged a red blast from the joined hands of Kitty and Ember. A blast that had been at least ten feet wide and went on to smash into the far end of Casper High, detonating it.

"I felt that!" Sam's voice came faintly over the phone.

"Hasn't our school seen enough ghost abuse in one year?" Danny sighed.

"It hit our school? Sweet!" Tucker blurted. A rather painful-sounding _Thwack_ sounded over the phone.

"Knock it off, Tucker."

Danny dodged several more red ecto-blasts, not as big but moving much faster.

"Where are you now?" Danny asked.

"The lab. Your dad wants to know where you are and why we want to steal his equipment."

"Make something up!"

"Mr. Fenton, Danny has been eaten by that werewolf ghost and we need the equipment to extract him."

"Works for me!" Jack's voice came from over the phone, loudly.

_Wow, his receiver is good, _Danny thought.

(Coincidentally, Jack was thinking the exact opposite based on the fact that Danny could be heard over the gastric noises he supposed would be present in Wulf's stomach, where he believed Danny to be calling from.)

Suddenly, a blast of red energy shot through and destroyed the phone out of Danny's hand. "Aw crud."

"You and your dork buddy robbed me of my fanbase!" Ember yelled, summoning a red ball of ectolight above her head.

The ball of red light suddenly exploded around her and transfigured the ectoplasmic body of Ember into a pure destructive force. "Soul Blitz!" she yelled! And suddenly the energy she had become dashed forward, tearing through Danny, hurting him, weakening him, as if his essence was being pounded by an entire offensive line.

When it was over, Danny looked around, dazed and confused. That ended rather quickly.

"Phantasm Fist!" Kitty yelled as she drove a punch into Danny's still hypothetical ribcage. He went flying through the sky above Amity and slammed into an apartment near Park Lake.

Danny quickly sat up and phased through a wall. He needed to rest, and he couldn't take many more blows like that. He discarded his ghostly shell when he found himself in a room. Then, something in his pocket started buzzing. Which was weird, because his phone was currently about a billion different molecules floating somewhere over Dash's house.

He removed the small device… a Titancom. Raven had given him one during a few weeks ago while she was teaching him some healing techniques. (Which he had never quite mastered, but could perhaps field test one day in the future, when there was an actual living human with an injury near by.)

He activated the device, which should by no logical chain of events been in that pair of pants.

"Hello?"

"Danny, this line is safe. It's Noel again."

"Hey again. What now?"

"Any word on Jinx?"

"YES! She has some local ghosts riled up with some glowing jewel and she's using them to pound the non-living daylights out of me."

"She's in Amity Park, then?"

"No, she attacked me on vacation!" Danny rolled his eyes at his own sarcasm. This was no time to be rude.

"Just stay where you are and I'll get the other Titans up there to help you. Jinx is _our _enemy."

"There's no time for that. I can handle it." Danny didn't like it that Noel still treated him like an inferior, even if he wasn't quite so condenscending as he had once been.

"I'm sure you can, but what happens when it's over? You gonna send her to us in the mail?"

Danny sighed.

"Just listen to me."

"Why? She's attacking me, and controlling my enemies."

"Because…" Noel thought a moment. "I'm older then you."

"Older _than _me," corrected Danny.

"What?"

"You're older _than me, _not older _th**e**n me._ You really have been hanging around Legend Maker too long."

Danny thought he heard a vein throb in Noel's forehead. "I know," he said at length. "Sometimes I think she just does it as a running gag."

"Let's get this over with. I'm sure we're confusing readers who don't know LM's stuff, and infuriating those who don't like the fourth wall to come down."

"Fine. You can handle Jinx yourself, just contact the Titans when you're done."

"Before you go, how the heck did I get this communicator?"

"Rae said you were having trouble so I used a Personal Deus Ex Machina to beam one into your pocket... Now go, get those ghosts before your town is a crater."

Danny clicked the device off. He just hoped the very short amount of rest was enough. "Going ghost," he said lamely to himself. And he was off again…

oooo

Tucker and Sam loaded themselves with all the ghost hunting gear they could carry, which wasn't exactly much considering Tucker refused to part with all his techno-geek gear, and because of the way Sam dressed she had few pockets to carry stuff in. Still, the duo managed to get the Jack of Ninetales, a Modified Fenton Thermos that had a longer range, and a spool of string from the Fenton Fisher, (the fisher itself was still a tangled mess.) and they headed to the one place Danny wouldn't be afraid to take the fight: School.

There, they found Danny, Ember, and Kitty, and not too far away on the roof of the school, stood the Pink-haired manipulator, Jinx.

Danny hit the ground hard and rolled away as Ember shot a bright stream of energy at him, and then he shot up and smashed Kitty in the stomach. Kitty reeled from the hit and her red eyes flashed, staring angry daggers at Danny. Literally, as her eyes shot blasts of energy.

"Since when can Kitty do THAT!" Tucker gasped.

Sam just shrugged.

Danny dodged most of the wayward daggers of ectoplasm, but the two that hit him in the shoulders drilled through him and pinned him to a wall, sending and agonizing pain throughout his upper body. "AAAHHHAHHAAHH!" Danny gritted through the pain, and looked straight up at Jinx.

"She's in control, she's the one I have to get to," Danny told himself. Suddenly Ember appeared and began to drill gothic punches into Danny's chest as she had done to Kitty earlier.

"Why is it that when two ghost babes attack Danny, they have to have THE WORST FASHION senses ever." Tucker complained.

"Tucker, shut up. Danny's in danger and you can only think about your hormones?"

"Sorry. Ok. Here's the plan you tie up the eighties reject with the Fishing Line, and I'll see if I can hit PreppieGoth with the Jack on Ninetales."

"Tucker, Problem: they're suspended forty feet in the air."

"Right. Which is why we'll give the stuff to Danny and let him handle it."

As Tucker said that, the two daggers that had pinned Danny to the side of Casper High suddenly ejected from his body and a green aura flared around him. Danny flipped over the attacking Ember and drove his foot into her spectral cranium, and then smashed a Ectoplasmic Energy blast into Kitty's face.

He stood tall. He had to win. _I _will_ win!_

_(Well, technically, he hovered, but who's keeping track?) _


	5. The Disaster that Almost Wasn't

Danny's burst of ectoplasmic energy gave him the vantage point he had needed to notice Sam and Tucker's presence, something which it seemed neither Kitty, Ember, nor Jinx had noticed.

But flying over to them would mean leading the ghosts right to them, so he couldn't do that. Suddenly, he noticed Kitty was nowhere to be seen, and that Ember was flying at him again. "I could have been worshiped like a goddess, and you took that from me, Dipwad!"

"Still the same hack writing your insults, then?" Danny asked as Ember crashed into him. He deflected her blows as best he could, and returned with a blast of ectoplasm to the stomach, but it did little to slow her down. She went invisible, and before Danny could adjust his ghost vision to see her, she had kicked him in the face.

Danny found himself reeling, and when he regained control of his movment, it was too late as he seemingly slammed into a sharp point, despite being thirty feet above the school. "You tried to take away my Johnny, boy. I'm not happy about that!" And then Kitty smashed him in the face, right where Ember had kicked him, and sent him flying towards a tree. He blasted through the branches, some of them tearing at his ghost form, others breaking...

Danny shot upwards from among the leaves, damaging the tree. Yeah, Sam would lecture him on that later... "This is getting old, ladies," he said as the two ghosts came near him.

The three clashed again, and Sam and Tucker were probably amazed that his powers were holding out as long as they had. Danny smashed Ember in the face and at the same time kicked Kitty in the side, knocking them back, but they kept coming.

Kitty fired an ectoplasmic blast at Danny, which caught him in the chest and sent him flying towards Ember, who clasped her hands together and smashed him back to Kitty. The two started playing tennis with him! "Game, set, match!" Kitty yelled as she smashed him into the ground. Danny rode the dirt a while, digging a shallow ditch, and looked up in time to see Ember coming down at him fast with spike-heeled boots, and knew he didn't want to be on the receiving end of that. He flipped backwards out of the ditch and landed upside down, doing a handspring, and combining it with his ghost aura to hurl himself straight up, kicking the surprised Kitty and launching her into the sky.

"You can't let that psychopath win!" Danny yelled at them. Then he decided that while they were recovering, it would be a good time to go after Jinx, so he took of towards the roof of the school. "I have to get to her," he said quietly to himself.

"You think you can get to me before they get to you, child?" Jinx asked. She raised her hand and the amulet glowed, and suddenly, Kitty and Ember were infront of him. "Tear him apart."

"I've had enough of this." Danny said. The two ghosts femmes split up and flanked him from both sides, and Danny put both his hands out as if to stop them. But rather than any normal defense, their spirits started to warp towards Danny's center of gravity, balling up as green incandescence surrounded them. With a flash of light, Ember and Kitty were contained in a small orb.

"What the..." Jinx exclaimed.

"I figured if I can make a ghost shield that keeps things out, I can make one that keeps things in too. Danny reached for his thermos, but found it was not there. And not knowing that Tucker had brought the long range thermos, he decided to throw the two away, hurling the spherical prison containing Ember and Kitty into the bottom of Lake Amity... some seven miles away.

"Now, stand down, Jinx," Danny said, with a pitiful attempt to sound macho and super-heroey.

"Well. This is a problem. How 'bout I control you instead, then?"

Danny's eyes shot open wide. He hadn't thought of that!

Jinx raised her hand and the amulet glowed, and Danny felt his mind giving way to anger, even hatred, and his power grew... "OBEY ME, DANNY PHANTOM!" Yelled Jinx. "I promise I'll let you go once I get what I came for. But I do need a guide through your ghost world..."

**0000**

It was a guide that she wouldn't get however.

"Tucker!" Sam yelled. "She's trying to control Danny... Do something!"

"Right. Has Danny used that long range thermos yet?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah, against that 'Abe' guy a few weeks ago..."

**FLASHBACK**

Danny looked up at the ghost towering over him. "Um. Who are you? And please say you're benevolent!"

"I am ABE! The perfect ghost! I shall conquer the world of the living and subjugate it's leaders to my will! I am super strong, invulnerable, super fast, and I can shoot laser beams from my eyes! I can inhale and exhale at a capacity no mortal man can match!"

"So much for hoping you'd be a good guy," Danny sighed.

"You think you can beat me!" Abe pistoned a fist out so fast Danny didn't know what hit him until he peeled himself off the brick wall he'd been slammed into.

"Ouch. OK, Mr. Abe... Do you have any weaknesses?" Danny staggered forward, getting dangerously close to him.

"Of course. I am powerless against the letters C and D! But you will never find them fast enough to defeat me, because you will die soon!"

Danny looked down at the emblem on his chest. "I never liked this thing anyway," he said, peeling it off and sticking it on Abe's abdomen.

"What... NO!" Abe began to burst into flames, and then ran off, wailing in agony.

"Wait! Come back!" Danny yelled, taking out the long-range thermos. "It's a good thing my dad built this thing." Danny aimed it at the distant ghost, channeled his energy into it, and fired, stopping Abe in his tracks and sucking him into the thermos.

"No! I cannot be defeated!" Abe yelled as he was sucked in.

"That was easy."

**END FLASHBACK**

"Why did you ask?" Sam handed Tucker the thermos.

"You know one of these doesn't work until Danny charges it first. That was established in Episode One," Tucker replied.

Nearby, a wall fell to pieces.

"That can be fixed." Tucker insisted. Sam just glared at him.

Tucker extended the thermos, but rather than grabbing Jinx (which would have been impossible since she wasn't a ghost), he grabbed Danny with it.

"What!" Jinx bellowed again as her new guide was sucked away by the blue beam.

"AAAAHHHhh!" Danny yelled. "So this is what it feels like... AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHhhh!"

**And then nothing...**

Danny's eyes snapped open, his body reforming from the cylindrical shape it had assumed whilst in the thermos. The first thing he noticed was the ghost shield activated outside his window, the second being that it was indeed his window in his room.

"Hey Danny." A voice came from beside him. Tucker's.

"Tucker," Danny said, getting up and turning around. "What... where...?"

Tucker looked profoundly distressed. "It's been about ten minutes since your fight at the school. After I pulled you into the thermos Jinx disappeared and I brought you here."

"Thanks for the save. Where's Sam?" He hoped she was alright...

"She said she had to take care of something at her house." Tucker replied. "She wanted us to meet her there, after we assured your dad you were OK."

"Right. I still can't believe you told him that Wulf ate me." Danny laughed.

"I can't believe he _believed_ it," said Tucker as they left the room.

**0000**

The two arrived at Sam's house a short while later, this time without the thermos or the Jack of Nine-tails. But Sam had kept the fishing line for the Fenton Fisher, and had asked them to bring the Fisher itself.

"Notice anything odd?" Sam said holding up a piece of the glowing string. Or more accurately, the string that _should_ have been glowing.

"Um... It looks a bit dim," said Tucker. Sam and Danny smirked at him.

"I can't believe I didn't realize this earlier," Sam said. "The string only affects ghosts when the Fisher is running a charge through it. Right now it's just a high-tech piece of string."

"A very expensive high-tech piece of string," Danny corrected. "Where's the rest of it? It costs my dad a fortune"

Sam pointed to her window, which Danny and Tucker looked out. "Oh."

The wire was strung up throughout the alley ways outside Sam's window, criss-crossing and zig-zagging along other windows and fire-escapes.

"So your plan is..." Tucker started, when suddenly a transparent face jutted from Sam's, along with Danny's ghost sense cloud escaping from his mouth.

"Boo," the second face said in Ember's voice.

"AHH!" Tucker yelled, jumping into Danny's arms Scooby-Doo style.

"Sam!" Danny yelled, dumping Tucker to the side.

"Not any more!" Sam, now over-shadowed by Ember, bellowed, punching Danny. He recoiled, more in horror than actual pain. Not that it didn't hurt.

Suddenly, Paulina phased through the wall of his room. "High there," she said in Paulina's voice, but in a tone Paulina never used. Then it switched to Kitty's octave. "Remember me!"

"I'm going ghost!" Danny yelled, but before he could Sam blasted him in the chest knocking him into her TV, busting the screen and shocking Danny.

"I don't think so. This is going down in this room, kid!"

"There's more than one way to fight someone who's over-shadowed." Danny's body glowed briefly, but no visible transformation took place. Then he lashed out and punched Sam in the face. But rather than Sam's body taking the blow, Ember's head snapped out of her backwards, recoiling from the blow.

"What... HOW!" Ember-Sam yelled.

"Is your memory that short?" Danny asked. He had channeled his ghost energy in a unique method of transformation he had learned a while back, in which the ghost power rested just under the surface of his skin, lashing out when he willed, phasing through the flesh of a possessed person and hitting, harming the ghost within. Danny used this attack against Sam again, knocking her out of the window and into the mish-mash of strings below.

He then promptly gasped in horror as he noticed some of the wires were lacerating Sam. "Jinx you..." But before he could finish the thought, Kitty punched him in the face, enhancing Paulina's muscles with her own power.

"This goes down now!" She insisted, raising her hand and preparing to make a blast that would take Danny out of the fight.

"I don't get it. If Jinx just needs a guide through the ghost zone, why doesn't she use one of you?"

At that, Kitty hesitated just long enough for Danny to grab Tucker and phase through the floor, falling into the main level of Sam's house, and then he took off out the door...

His ghost sense went off again. But rather than a small cloud, it was like exhaling a gallon of evaporated water at once, which was painful, as Danny started hacking and coughing out the vapor... He looked up...

And wished he hadn't:

The sky was full of ghosts. Ghosts with red auras; red eyes. Ghosts under Jinx's control.

"Suffering spooks!" Danny yelled.

"This is bad," Tucker agreed.

"I'm not done with you yet!"

"Neither am I!" came the voices of Ember and Kitty as they launched themselves at Danny, still in the bodies of Sam and Paulina.

"Tucker, run!" And so Tucker did.

"Ah, crud. I'm GOING GHOST!"


	6. The Victory That Did Not Last

The rings flashed up and Danny suddenly became Danny Phantom again. Just in time for Ember to smash him in the face with Sam's possessed fist, right before Kitty kicked him in the stomach and sent him flying with Paulina's high-heels.

"Sam." Danny yelled, trying to get up. She was bleeding rather profusely from the cuts caused by the Fenton Fisher line she'd strung up around the neighborhood. "Fight her! Don't let Ember control you!"

"Sam has already lost the fight, dipstick!" Ember's words, Sam's voice.

"No she hasn't!" Danny yelled, and placed a hand to Sam's stomach and blasted through her skin, knocking the ghost form of Ember out of her. Sam's wounded body collapsed in a heap, and Danny pulled her into another inverted ghost dome, locking her away for now.

Then Kitty attacked, using Paulina's body to claw at Danny's face. Danny fought back, but everything he tried, she deflected.

"You never answered my question earlier Kitty," Danny said through the fighting. "Why can't you guide Jinx through the ghost zone?"

This seemed to do nothing but make Kitty angry. Paulina's hands glowed red and suddenly Danny found himself increasingly un-able to defend himself from the blows, which were digging into his ghost form's version of skin, and stinging. "That's not important anymore! After you're gone, we'll raze this town! And Jump City! Dakota! Light City! Gotham, Metropolis, New York, San Francisco… Nashville! Every city that opposes the Lordship of Mistress Jinx will burn!"

"What!" Danny exclaimed. "Since when does she want to conquer earth?" He ducked as Kitty swiped at his head and returned with a right punch, but Kitty deflected it, and then grabbed his wrist and twisted it into a joint lock. He formed an ectoplasm beam with his left hand and shoved it into the face of the possessed Hispanic girl, trying to drive Kitty out… But a red ghost shield appeared centimeters from her face and stopped the beam dead. Then her hand lashed out, her fingernails-turned-claws by the ghost-amulet's power, digging into Danny's wrist and twisting it into a different but similarly painful lock.

"Danny?" Sam asked, turning over, and groggy.

"AAHh!" Danny yelled as Kitty continued to apply pressure. "Get out of here Sam! I can handle.. AAAAHHHHHHH!" The pain was becoming excruciating, and Danny felt the dark crimson energies of the amulet that were still controlling Kitty siphon into him, but not control him, no… They were _killing _him.

"Sam!" Danny yelled.

"Leave girl!" Paulina's host yelled from inside her.

"No!" Sam jumped up and grabbed Paulina's shoulders, dragged her to the ground, mounted her, and started pounding her face, bloodying both face and knuckles.

"You really wanted to do that, didn't you?" Danny asked. Sam blushed.

"Gah. Ouch!" Sam exclaimed. "What happened?" She gritted her teeth, the pain of her cuts assaulting her. Her left arm was pasted-over rivulets blood, and the stockings on her right leg were matted crimson.

"I'm sorry… You kind of got knocked out a window during the fight and landed on those cords you strung up."

"And I just got make up in the cut on my hand," she sighed,

Danny glared at her.

"What? It burns! Besides, Paulina's a shallow twat. She deserved it."

Now Danny sighed, exasperated by Sam's insistence that she had the right to beat the crap out of Paulina. But he was grateful and worried. "You need to get out of here. Get to the hospital before those cuts get you infected…"

Kitty popped out of Paulina suddenly, scaring Danny and Sam. "What… where… _Danny?_"

"Stay back you psycho—" Sam yelled at Kitty.

"No, Sam, wait…!"

"What Danny?"

"Her eyes. They're not red. She's not being controlled right now." Indeed, Kitty's eyes were completely devoid of redness, so much that Ben Stein might have gotten a bonus had any Clear Eyes executives been there.

"You have to help me Danny! Jinx tried to control ghosts, and she kept adding more and more to he 'army'… but now she can't take it. She's gone insane and… EAUGH!" Kitty suddenly jerked back, twitching, her eyes flashing red, once, then two rapid flashes. Then she blinked, and her eyes were glowing. Jinx's power was back.

"My Johnny! You tried to take him!" Kitty mumbled, glaring at Danny hatefully. A new shadow on the ground appeared, and Danny looked up…

Jinx.

She was there, not fifty feet away, hand outstretched at them, with the amulet glowing red at the end of it. Jinx landed near by, a crazed look in her eyes, and both Ember, and Kitty vanished. Leaving just the four humans, together in the middle of the road outside Sam's house.

"You should listen to him." She said, looking at Sam. "You're not a ghost, and you're certainly no superhero. Go away, before I decide you're not worth keeping alive…" Jinx had an odd tinge to her voice. A tinge that sounded almost… loony, as if The Joker had jumped ship into the young woman's body.

Danny looked deeper into her eyes. Crazed, yes. More so than he originally realized. They were pulsating red, eyes within eyes. Voices, it seemed cried out from them, but no sound… Danny could only feel them. The protests of the controlled. And they were driving Jinx absolutely insane.

**0000**

Tucker didn't stop running. His legs were hurting yes, but he had to get away and find help for Danny. Or wait for him to get done… or… something. He had no idea why he was running, really, other than that Danny had told him too. And it took running out in front of a car and almost getting hit by it to make him realize he also had no idea _where _he was running to. Jerking to a stop, Tucker went off balance and fell to the asphalt.

He sat up and rubbed his bruised shoulder. "Who the heck is still in this part of town!" He blurted.

A middle-aged African-American man quickly got out of the vehicle and ran around his car to where Tucker was. And he was a man Tucker recognized: Damon Gray, father of his ex-girlfriend and femme ghost hunter Valerie Gray.

"Oh, excuse me Mr. Gray…" Tucker blurted fearing reprisal.

"Are you OK…?" Damon blurted

"I'm fine. I think…" Tucker allowed Damon to help him up. "Why haven't you gotten out of town yet."

"Well, not that it's any of your business, but I had the hardest time getting, my daughter out the door. It's almost like she wanted to stay here with the ghosts everywhere… or whatever those things are."

"Wait… are you saying Valerie is with you?"

"You know her… Oh. You're that boy I caught sneaking into Axion a couple months ago."

"Yeah, that'd be me." Tucker gave a sheepish grin.

"Conner, right?"

"Tucker."

About this time, Valerie's head popped out of a window in the backseat of Damon's car. "Daddy? What's going on?" Then she saw Tucker. "Oh, it's you. Conner."

"Tucker.

"Whatever."

"Valerie!" Tucker rudely knocked Damon out of the way and ran over to her window. "Dan…Inviso-Bill is fighting ghosts and stuff over on…" he told her the name of Sam's street , "…and you need to go help him… I mean.. He'll be weak and easy to capture!"

"What are you getting at? Who told you…?" Valerie's voice was a mix of shock and anger. "How'd you know about my _other job!_"

Tucker's face contorted into a very painful nervous smile, but before he could say anything, Valerie's father appeared next to him.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing, Daddy. I'm OK." Valerie lied.

**0000**

A few minutes later Tucker ran on, hating what had just happened. He only wished that somehow what he had told Valerie could be forgotten some how. Maybe Danny could zap her brain or something…

"Conner!" A sudden but emphatic whisper came from seemingly nowhere, scaring Tuck out of his wits. And then Johnny 13 phased into visibility.

"Johnny! Look I swear it wasn't my fault… or Danny's! Please just…"

"Shut up, Conner, I'm not attacking you. What is going on?"

"It's Tucker."

"Whatever. Tell me what's happening. Where's Kitty? Is she safe?"

"I'm not sure. You see… this Jinx—this _girl_ named Jinx came to town and started taking over ghosts. She took over Ember and Kitty at first, just them, you see, and now.."

"Now she has an army. Where's your friend?"

"Danny?"

Johnny's eyes narrowed. "No, I mean Pope Muhammad of Rivendell—OF COURSE I MEAN DANNY!"

"Where is Shadow?"

"I don't know, now tell me where your friend is!"

"He's somewhere in town fighting…"

Johnny took a step back, inhaled deeply, probably to calm himself. He seemed to think, mull over something for a moment. "What is this 'Jinx' using to control the ghosts?"

"A red amulet." Tucker breathed deeply too, now calmer than he had been since the fight began. "I don't know…"

"I do. Johnny cut him off."

**0000**

Danny charged forward, and punched at Jinx, thankful that Sam wasn't there any longer. And every time the same thing: that condemnable red aura around Jinx. Every time he stuck his hand in to it, it burned, and ripped some more of his ghostly body off, absorbing it. She physically controlled the essence of ectoplasm. It would be common since, then to detransform. One would think that Danny didn't because in the heat of battle common sense becomes very uncommon. But it was actually because in his human form he'd be powerless against her if she chose to use her standard arsenal of Hex Blasts. So it wasn't from lack of common sense at all.

"Why don't you take a hint, child?" Jinx's aura lashed out at him again, and Danny dodged backwards, having to suck his gut in to avoid contact. He countered with an ectoplasmic energy beam, but it didn't make contact, but was merely absorbed by the aura.

"Please, Jinx! Stop! Didn't you just want to find the woman's spirit and leave?"

This only seemed to make Jinx angry, and she whipped at him again with the aura, lashing across his chest and sending him to the ground, and then reared back for a succession of strikes that would eat away at Danny's ectoplasmic body.

"Llarnes!" Danny yelled in agony. Where the name had come from, telepathic link, perhaps, or maybe he had read it or heard it from one of the Titans before. It didn't matter; he was simply trying to appeal to the side of her that was still human. "You're going to have more blood on your hands after this. You… AAGHH! You're doing exactly the opposite of what you set out to! You're going to kill people…."

Danny sat up, Jinx apparently tired of draining him. But she gave no indication of relenting, just a psychotic grin. And all Danny could think about was the blood running down Sam's face, arms, and legs, and how Jinx was far too mad-driven to give a flip.

"You're going to hurt people I care about." Danny said in a low voice, unable to beat her and trying to reason. But one cannot reason with the insane.

"Like I care." Jinx replied.

Which, of course, was the WRONG thing to say. Danny stood up slowly, extended his hands out to the sides as if to prepare for a glomp. But this was no hug he had in store for her. His face contorted into a mask of rage.

**_"I CARE!" _**And if what Danny had used against Johnny had been the ectoplasmic equivalent of a Kamehameha wave, then what happened now was the ectoplasmic equivalent of the Death Star's main weapon.

The Green-White beam, shot from the ground and quickly made it to the sky, with Jinx burning atop it, the wave stripping the aura away and carrying her heavenward.

But then it stopped, right about when Jinx reached the lowest clouds, and red energy began pouring off the other side, as Jinx countered with a Hex Blast.

An enourmous, red, Hex Blast, fueled by ghost energy. Ghosts swirled around her, and started pumping energy into here, at least half her army. The other half began firing ectoplasmic energy beams at Danny, thousands upon thousands raining down on him. The first few smarted, but fueled Danny's determination, his resolve…

And as that grew, something changed. The blasts from Jinx's minions began to HELP him. Danny's attack was drawing so heavily on energy that it began to absorb it! And so the juggernauts of power, one unwittingly aiding the other, fell into a stalemate.

And then Danny had to wonder: Did Jinx know her minions were _helping _him by firing at him… Or was she so bonkers that she JUST DIDN'T CARE?

**0000**

Tucker and Johnny watched from the roof of a distant skyscraper. "It's called the Amulet of Roasha, forged in Salem, long before they ever thought of witch trials."

"And how is that important now?" Tucker asked Johnny.

"Hey, I thought it was nifty info. Anyway. It's weakness is that it is pretty much powerless against non ghosts. It can't control a ghost if the ghost is already overshadowing another human."

Just then, what sounded like a sonic boom resounded from the direction of the battle, and a huge green beam hurled Jinx into the sky, countered by a massive red blast from Jinx. And all the ghosts in the sky began swirling around that struggle,

"Why are half the ghosts helping Danny?" Tucker asked.

"I don't think she realizes that it IS helping Danny," Johnny replied.

"So what exactly do we do?" Johnny got an evil glint in his eye, sadistic joy, or something. And then Tucker realized what he was thinking. "No! No! You are not going to…"

But Tucker could do nothing to resist, as Johnny jumped inside of him. "Thanks for the body, Conner," Johnny smirked.

**0000**

Sam struggled into the car. She didn't have her license or even her permit… and normally she would never have stolen a car, even an abandoned one, but she felt herself about to pass out from the blood loss. She had to get to the hospital…

And to hold hope her head would stop swimming long enough for her to see the road… A few eternities went by in a blur and then she heard voices repeating something. Something that sounded like "Get a doctor, this girl is injured…"

**0000**

Danny directed the massive beam of ectoplasm forward, hoping he could break through Jinx's guard. But he felt neither side giving…

**0000**

Johnny flew higher, in Tucker's body, trying to make it through Jinx's blockade of ghosts around her. Giant strands of red and green energy were lashing out from the beam, and tearing parts of downtown Amity to shreds. The city couldn't take much more of this…

But the deadly stalemate continued. The only consolation was that most of the city in the area around the fight was evacuated. A red strand lashed up at Tucker's body, and Johnny dodged it, feeling the heat singe Tucker's skin.

A light green aura surrounded Johnny, and he charged headlong at Jinx, but not twenty feat away, the ghosts around him became solid, restricting the body of his host. And at this range, he noticed something he hadn't noticed before; something BAD.

The ghosts nearest Jinx were breaking up, vanishing into her aura. She was ABSORBING their souls to fuel her psychotically large Hex Blast…

And Kitty was nearing the end of the line.

"YOU WITCH!" Tucker yelled, Johnny's voice bellowing from the teen's vocal cords. "Leave my Kitty alone!"

And the same determination fueled power that Danny seemed to acess so freely perhaps took a chance and jumped, just for a moment, into one who _didn't_ walk in both worlds. And yet an entity that did for now, as he was both Tucker Foley and Johnny Thirteen, their minds merged by determination, their bodies bonded on a whim.

And they managed to break through…

Perhaps Jinx gasped in horror, or perhaps she was too crazy for that, but when they collided, she must have been holding the amulet rather precariously, because it went flying.

"No!" Johnny yelled, slipping out of the way of Danny's massive blast just in time to not get vaporized..

He looked in the way the amulet had flown, trying to follow it, but was blinded. The intense glow of the sun, reflecting off Lake Amity in the Wisconsin sunset made tracking the amulet with human eyes impossible. Where it ended up next…

…was up to fate.

**0000**

Danny fell on all fours, then on his stomach, and rolled over on his back, breathing heavily, exhausted, the well dry. His ghost form melted away, but the fight was over. Finally everything would be alright. As soon as somebody caught the plummeting Jinx.

And ironically, Tucker and Johnny were the heroes this time…

**0000**

Mr. Lancer ambled along in front of the school There had been yet another battle earlier, and he was checking out the damage. It wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. A few broken windows, mostly.

"These… ghosts!" he exclaimed. "_The Great Gatsby_, they are going to knock down the city!"

Something reflective caught his eye. He walked over and examined the object. An amulet of some sort, with a rather large red ruby encased by a gold scarab. He didn't much care for jewelry, and it was probably fake anyway. Either way, he could likely get a pretty penny for it on E-bay. If they could sell bags of air, surely a trinket that appeared so valuable would go for thousands.

**0000**

Five hours later, after much arguing and blame tossing, all the parties involved reached an agreement..

"Here it is," Danny said as he handed Johnny the pumpkin in which the Fright Knight's sword, the Soul Shredder, was sheathed. "You're leverage."

"Good," Johnny replied, holding Kitty close. "If you break the truce, I let the Knight out in Amity."

"And if _you_ break the truce, I hunt you down and lock you in the thermos for all eternity."

Johnny visibly gulped. "OK. No more fights." Shadow made noise that would best be described as an sad puppy, if said puppy was possessed by Trigon. "Sorry, Shadow. A deal's a deal." Johnny and Kitty got on the bike, and drove off through the open ghost portal.

"That just leaves one thing:" Tucker said, "what to do with Jinx." The two teens surveyed the unconscious form of Llarnes Morath. It had taken almost more will power than Danny could muster, but he did eventually catch her. After all, she was insane when she did what she did.

"Noel said I should call the Titans." Danny sighed. Suddenly, a flash of light nearly blinded Danny and Tucker, and a ball of reality warping lighting appeared in the center of the room… and when it disappeared, a box with two round grenade looking devices and a letter appeared on the table, lid attached to the bottom rather than sealing it shut.

Danny picked up the letter and read.

_Dear Danny of the Past._

_These are Reality Bites bombs. Positive polarity turns ghosts solid; negative polarity makes what's solid ethereal. I have enclosed one of each. Use them and a spare thermos to mail Jinx to the Titans—just like Noel told you not to._

_Thanks and have a great life, Tucker of the Future._

"What's it say?" Tucker asked.

Danny just arched an eyebrow.

**Four Days Later….**

Vlad leaned back in his chair. Some sort of amulet had been involved, in young Daniel's recent battle with Jinx. And his sources indicated it must have been the Amulet of Roasha.

The page he was viewing finished loading. A red ruby core surrounded by gold, modeled in the shape of a scarab. Yes, it was an exact match. "Bingo," Vlad said, his lips twisting into a wicked smile.

* * *

**_A/N: -LOUD TRUMPETS AND FANFARE- WOOT! I have now officially finished my first fan fiction! Yay me! W00T!_**

**_And all that Jazz. Well, as always, tell me what you think. I hope this ending was effective and not too much of a cop-out. After all, I said Johnny managed to get it away from her in the flashback…_**

**_I didn't say he didn't have help! Go Tucker!_**

**_Disclaimer: Reality Bites bombs were a product of Legend Maker's mind, not my own.  
_**

**_Disclaimer 2: Danny Phantom is owned by Butch Hartman and Billianfold Inc. No reportable income was made off of this fanfic._**


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